Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonsonwas an English playwright, poet, actor and literary critic of the 17th century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, or The Foxe, The Alchemistand Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedyand for his lyric poetry; he is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth11 June 1572
Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast, Still to be powder'd, all perfum'd. Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound.
It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.
Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace Robes loosely flowing, hair as free Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
You learn nothing about someone by the way they win the fight, you learn everything about the way they lose and keep coming back.
Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men's perfections in a science he formed still one Art.
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.
If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare , rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser , or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read , and praise to give .
He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Wherein the graver had a strife / With Nature to out-do the life.
A good dog deserves a good bone.
... the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor and other tackle.